India Unbound!

This August, we celebrated the 60th Anniversary of independence. We as children and young students have grown up studying the glorious saga of the Great Indian Freedom Struggle. What makes it so special is the fact that even after being impoverished by colonial powers and ruled ruthlessly by the British Raj for more than 150 years, the appointed day came- when India awaked to life and freedom-the day when India stood forth again, after a long slumber and struggle, vital, free and independent.

Six decades later, the country that emerged from the wreckage of the British Raj, is undoubtedly the worlds largest and the most complex democracy. Over these years, India has definitely carved a niche for itself as a country which the First World cannot afford to ignore. Be it the NSG waiver, the 123 agreement, the Doha Round, the Tata Nano, the Twenty-20 world cup or the Olympics success, what binds them all is the premise- India Shining. With young, dynamic and visionary leaders, politicians and policy-makers in the making, India is poised after years of rapid economic growth, to take its place as one of the giants of the 21st century. An India whose very survival seemed in doubt during the conflagration of 1947 offers lessons in democracy-building that the rest of the world would do well to heed.

When I think how my country should be like in 2025, what I see first is a literate India. Even today, illiteracy remains rife with just under half our population unable to read or write in any of our several dozens of scripts. But we can no longer afford the attitude that literacy is an extravagance. In a race which no one can avoid, illiteracy is the main drawback that reflects a lack of opportunity for growth, prosperity and a happy life. With failure of tax exemption schemes and increasing cases of farmer suicides, India has to restructure its priorities and with visionary long-term planning, make correct decisions that can ensure equitable and sustainable growth opportunities to all.

The post 1991 era- the Rajiv Gandhi vision which was realized by the trio of Narsimha Rao, Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherji, saw the dawn of the information age in India. With opening up of its economy, India entered a world with a ubiquitous network of fiber-optic cabling and the imminent Y2K scare, which made an average Indian computer professional indispensable to the world. The services industry which flourished and marked the Indian rise in the world arena is, and will remain a skill intensive sector.

A vast proportion of India’s population-60 percent- depends on agriculture while producing 20 percent of the national income. In services, its reverse-20 percent labor producing 80 percent output. Thus a person in services produces 9 times as much a person in agriculture. In my personal opinion, the persistence of huge amounts of labor in low productivity agriculture is the principal reason why poverty is so hard to remove in India. To tax the rich and give money to the poor, is not a viable strategy and is not politically feasible. I believe India must shift as many people possible from agriculture to jobs where productivity would be higher, while investing more in agriculture to raise productivity there.

Like China, India must focus to make its low-tech manufacturing sector strong and shift towards an economy of scale to optimally utilize its geo-strategic, human and muscle resources. This again demands improvement in educational levels. India has failed to enhance employment in low-tech manufacturing as a result of hiring-and-firing restrictions, which have persisted since the Socialist days. It has meant a stagnant manufacturing sector in terms of output and also low employment, because people avoid building large factories.

In an economy of scale that I envision for India in the years to come, the quintessential factor for sustenance would be the sound management of resources. Channelizing the growing entrepreneurial energy, the increasing pool of enthusiastic and young manpower, management of the less tangible soft-resources, management of the low-tech manufacturing industries with less skilled workers, agricultural trade, foreign policy and sound money management would be the key areas.

The liberalization, privatization and globalization reforms have no doubt made India ready to take off for economic development comparable with rest of the developed world. The fruits of this growth however are still limited, encompassing a small percentage of Indian population creating a divide between the metro and rural cultures. In order to make the growth of Indian economy sustainable everybody involved must try to make it all- inclusive and ensure that hitherto excluded group of population becomes a part of the mainstream development process. We welcome the Delhi Metro but let us also join hands to connect villages and construct roads. We are proud of the Tata Nano, but let us try to make Singur smile too! Let us therefore, spare no efforts to make India a superpower leading the way for the world to emulate.